This sort of life – a life that loves the other – is the sort of priestly life lived with the other for the other that the Church is called to live. We can only live this life in the power of the Spirit who enthuses us with the love of Christ and forms within us the other-orientated life of Christ, the truly ecstatic life, the life that finds its joy in the other. In this way we participate in the priesthood of Christ. As we see in 1 Peter, when we ‘offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God’ we are exercising our priesthood through Christ and when we ‘proclaim the mighty acts of God’, Christ is exercising his priesthood through us. It is not that Christ has done his work which somehow qualifies us to do our work. It is rather that Christ’s perfect priestly sacrifice for sin has allowed us to enter into the holy place of his presence before the Father so that we may participate in his priestly prayer for and proclamation to the world. There is only one Christian priesthood, and that is the priesthood of Christ, the priest into whose ministry we are gathered through baptism and by faith, and in whose life human identity is perfected.
The presbyter among the priestly people of God
The insistence of 1 Peter on the priestly character and ministry of God’s people is well stated in the Porvoo Agreement between the Church of England and the Nordic Churches.
All the baptised . . . are called to offer their being as ‘a living sacrifice’ and to intercede for the Church and the salvation of the world. This is the corporate priesthood of the whole people of God and the calling to ministry and service.7
However, as we said earlier, 1 Peter maintains, in a very natural, matter-of-fact sort of way – showing there was nothing contentious in what he was saying – a dual reference to both the priestly character of the people of God and the particular ministry of those appointed presbyters in the early Christian communities.
I exhort the elders (presbuteroi) among you to tend the flock that is in your charge (kleros), exercising the oversight (episcope¯), not under compulsion but willingly, as God would have you do it. (1 Peter 5:1–2)
Other New Testament documents, especially the book of Acts, indicate that the appointment of elders was part of the missionary strategy of the early Church. After churches had been planted in different areas presbyters were appointed to tend and nurture their new life. This certainly seems to be the pattern in the new churches of the Iconium region in what is now southern Turkey established during Paul’s first missionary journey (Acts 14:21–23) and in Crete later in Paul’s ministry (Titus 1:5). Elsewhere we are told that there were presbyters in Ephesus in western Turkey (Acts 20) and, according to 1 Peter, in a large number of other churches in western Turkey and in the north of the country as well (1 Peter 1:1). Clearly the Church in Rome, from where 1 Peter was written, also had its presbyters. We can see from the more established church life towards the end of the first century reflected in the letters of Timothy and James that presbyters played a prominent part in church life (1 Timothy 4:14, 5:15; James 5:17) and it is very clear that in the earliest Christian community – the Jerusalem church – presbyters were very evident, particularly in the decision-making processes of the Church (Acts 15). Elders were a familiar part of synagogue life and it seems that their office was transferred in a natural sort of way to the new Christian communities.
All this amounts to very clear evidence for the existence of presbyters in the embryonic life of the Church. But what did they do? It is clear that they provided leadership within the churches and they probably did so in a collegial way because it is likely that each church had more than one presbyter. However, it is worth saying that the images and verbs used in the New Testament to describe the work of the presbyters are more subtle and nuanced than most of our contemporary talk of ‘church leaders’, and that most of the explicit references to ‘leaders’ occur in only one chapter of the book of Hebrews. Leadership was undoubtedly a key role of the elders in the early Christian communities but perhaps the example of the self-effacing leadership of Christ, the experience of the guidance of the Spirit and the dynamics of Christian existence in one mutually dependent body, made the churches careful about how they defined the form of leadership consistent with the new life of the gospel. It is a caution reflected in the ordination prayers of the Christian tradition.
For one of the best indications of the part played by presbyters in the life of the New Testament communities we need to turn to Paul’s farewell address to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20. Paul had spent about three years in Ephesus. He had used it as a base from which to reach much of western Turkey. His time there had been extraordinarily eventful. He had found Apollos there and other followers of Jesus whose understanding and experience of the faith was seriously limited. His ministry among them led to a Pentecost-type outpouring of the Spirit that was the beginning of the sort of ministry summarized in Dallas Willard’s catchphrase. Paul taught as Jesus taught about God’s kingdom to Jews and Gentiles and he did as Jesus did. People were healed and delivered, and the powerful exponents and authorities of Ephesian pagan and Jewish religion were challenged and undermined. As we shall see in a moment, Paul seems to have handled himself with great personal integrity, devotion to the work of God and deep love for the new community of Christ emerging around him.
In Acts 20 Paul is travelling near Ephesus. He sends word to the Ephesian elders that he would like to meet with them again, convinced that this will be his last time ever to see them. In a moving and emotional address in which Paul’s affection for them and for the whole Ephesian church is very clear, he implores them:
Keep watch over yourselves and over all the flock, of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers (episcopoi), to shepherd the Church of God that he obtained with the blood of his own Son. (Acts 20:28)
These are words that were to keep reappearing in the ordination prayers of the churches, so it is worth spending some time with them. The predominant image is pastoral – pastoral, that is, in the sense of the shepherding that was familiar to first-century people and which fills the biblical use of any pastoral metaphor: a demanding life dedicated more to developing health than maintaining comfort, more used to keeping them on the move than finding spuriously safe places to hide, committed to building up the life of the whole flock so that it is strong, energetic and generative, able to grow in quality and quantity. Paul would not have seen any opposition between the pastoral and the missionary. The Church of his day was missionary. The effectiveness of its mission required presbyters who could preserve its missionary character as a body in continual motion towards God’s purposes. Presbyteral ministry therefore clearly involved oversight. Paul even calls the presbyters ‘overseers’ – episcopoi in Greek, often translated as ‘bishops’. By the middle of the second century the ministry of the episcopoi became distinguished from the ministry of the presbuteroi but at this stage they appear to be two ways of describing the same ministry. In fact, for some time after the second century their ministries were closely identifiable and certainly much of the work of a bishop up to at least the fourth century was very similar to work of many parish priests today. Teaching was a key element in the presbyter-bishop’s oversight of the life of the people. With a ‘firm grasp of the word’ (Titus 1:9) they were to ‘labour in preaching and teaching’ (1 Timothy 5:17). They were to keep watch over, look after, oversee the life of Christ’s people, working with other ministries to ensure that the Church in that place is deeply rooted in the word and life of Christ, so that the body can ‘build itself up in love’ (Ephesians 4:16).
Paul knew from his own experience that ‘keeping watch’ involved protecting the people from danger, even the danger that might erupt from within (Acts 20:19–20) and supporting the weak, especially the poverty stricken (Acts 20:35). He commends the presbyters to follow his example. The ease with which Paul encourages them to look to his example signals another theme that consistently reoccurs not only through the biblical witness but also in the liturgies of the churches and other repositories of the Church’s wisdom about its ordained ministries. As well as his compassion for the weak and his commitment to the health of the Church,